Dr Helen Moore is a pioneering British ecopoet, socially engaged artist, writer, translator and academic based in Bristol.
She has published three ecopoetry collections, Hedge Fund, And Other Living Margins (Shearsman Books, 2012), ECOZOA (Permanent Publications, 2015), acclaimed by the Australian poet John Kinsella as ‘a milestone in the journey of ecopoetics’, and The Mother Country (Awen Publications, 2019) exploring aspects of British colonial history.
Helen offers an online mentoring programme, Wild Ways to Writing, and works with students internationally. Her work has been funded by the Royal Literary Fund, the Society of Authors and Arts Council England, and has been nominated for the Forward and Pushcart Prizes. In 2021 Helen gave a keynote lecture on ecopoetry and landscape at PoesiaEuropa in Italy, and collaborated with Cape Farewell in Dorset on RiverRun, a cross arts-science project examining pollution in Poole Bay. This culminated with an exhibition of her long landscape ecopoem, ‘Dorset Waterbodies, a Common / weal’ in two galleries in 2021, and the same piece is scheduled to be exhibited as part of Cape Farewell’s ‘Art & Climate Change Exhibition’ in Somerset’s Atkinson Gallery in October 2023.
Helen is currently working with the University of Gloucestershire to create a global network of ecopoets and is writing a prose memoir about her more-than-human teachers.
Creative Showcase
Helen has contributed a piece to our Creative Showcase, an evolving collection of new and recent works from our members.
Her latest collection, The Last Lighthouse in Rising Seas, is celebrated as confirming her "as the most imaginative and committed ecopoet of our time." She reflects on the book and the genesis of one poem, which conveys hope in how we can resist the forces of destruction and seek Thrutopian paths forward.
Environmental Keywords
Helen contributed a video performance of her poem ‘Earth Justice’ -- inspired by attending a mock ecocide trial at the Supreme Court, London in 2011, and featuring collages of some transcript material from the court proceedings -- for the Environmental Justice thread in our series on Environmental Keywords.
Quarantine Connection
Helen was the first member to feature her work as part of the ClimateCultures Quarantine Connection series. We shared the video of her reading her poem Ice, an Elegy, on Day 1 of the 40-day series.
Helen’s website
Helen Moore: ecopoet, writer, community artist & Nature educator
Helen’s ClimateCultures posts
Beyond Ecosystem Collapse: New Stories to Live By
Ecopoetikon: Global Ecopoetries for a Cultural Tipping Point
The Start of Something Going Wrong
Wild Writing: Embracing Our Humanimal Nature